Day 71: The Longest Road

An online journal about visual art, the urban landscape and design. Mary Louise Schumacher, the Journal Sentinel's art and architecture critic, leads the discussion and a community of writers contribute to the dialogue.

This weekend, we celebrated the opening of "The Emperor's Private Paradise," an unprecedented exhibit organized in cooperation with China at the Milwaukee Art Museum.

The exhibit effectively takes us inside the private garden of the Qianlong emperor, a contemporary of George Washington, who ruled what was then the largest and richest empire in the world. He was a bright man, an artist in his own right, who was serious about cultivating his inner life and who ruled at a time of great expansion and change. He was also a stubborn man, at times, who embodied the Chinese failure to anticipate the rise of the industrialized world.

In another period of expansion and rapid change, China is once again facing a philosophical crisis. It has responded by jailing bloggers, activists and artists, including the outspoken and internationally known Ai Weiwei.

During the course of the "Summer of China" or until Ai's release, Art City will mark each day of Weiwei's detention by reflecting on an excerpt from his blog, scrubbed from the Internet in China. Ai's blog and other writings were translated into English and published by MIT press in March.

In today's exceprt, originally posted on Feb. 23, 2006 we find an artist who is also serious man and interested in locating and cultivating the self. He writes eloquently about the meaning of modernism and about China's current philosophical crisis and stubbornness:

China still lacks a modernist movement of any magnitude, for the basis of such a movement would be the liberation of humanity and the illumination brought by the humanitarian spirit. Democracy, material wealth, and universal education are the soil upon which modernism exists. For a developing China, these are merely idealistic pursuits.

Modernism is the questioning of traditional humanitarian thought and a critical reflection on the human condition. Any other art movement that does not belong to this modernist culture is generally shallow, or lacking in spiritual value. As for activities lacking intellectual value, or creations that deviate from or appear to be modernist, these are but superficial imitations.

Modernism has no need for various masks or titles: it is the primal creation of the enlightened, it is the ultimate consideration of the meaning of existence and the plight of reality, it is keeping tabs on society and power, it does not compromise, it does not cooperate. Enlightenment is attained through a process of self-recognition, attained through a teeming thirst for and pursuit of an inner world, attained through interminable doubts and puzzlement.

And unadorned reality, panic, emptiness, or ennui exhibited in modernist works results from such fearless truth. This is not some cultural choice -- just as life is not a choice -- this is a concern for one's own existence, the cornerstone of all mental activities; it is cognition, the ultimate goal.

About Mary Louise Schumacher

Mary Louise Schumacher is the Journal Sentinel's art and architecture critic. She writes about culture, design, the urban landscape and Milwaukee's creative community. Art City is her award-winning cultural page and a community of more than 20 contributing writers and artists. Follow her on Facebook and Instagram.

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Keep up with the art scene and trends in urban design with art and architecture critic Mary Louise Schumacher. Every week, you'll get the latest reviews, musings on architecture and her picks for what to do on the weekends.